Shards of wood burst away under the impact. Each chop of the blade released a torrent of wine. Flecks of it splattered across her face, her clothes, and her arms. It pooled around her shoes and then soaked into the ground, only for the next barrel to replenish the flood.

The smell—of heady, powerful wine—made Margot sick. Sweat covered her body, both from the exertion and from nausea. She was panting, her hair sticking across her drenched face, before she finally stepped back from the shattered row of barrels.

The row of caskets.

Six barrels. Six slain members of the Hull family. Each body coiled up inside its tomb, knees drawn up to the chest, mouths open as though to cry out one final time.

Margot lifted her eyes. The lantern’s light couldn’t quite reach the darkest area behind the broken barrels, where the shadows seemed to cling heavily.

The faintest outlines of silhouettes hung there. Margot might not have even seen them except for six sets of shining eyes.

Louisa’s windswept hair, tied down with a headscarf. Ezra, taller than the others, his shoulders broader than the shriveled remains inside the barrels. Jeremiah and Giles, standing beside their father. Constance, next to her mother. And Esther, the smallest, her expression as unreadable as the ink drawing of her had been.

They stood there for a moment, lined up behind the barrels, watching Margot, watching as the dregs of wine soaked her shoes and drained into the soil.

Then, as one, they faded like smoke.

45

Margot sat on the step outside the fermentation room. Just like the day before, she was painted in red. Only, this time, the liquid was wine. She thought she would have preferred blood.

She heard Kant before she saw him. His limp seemed more pronounced as he slowly, haltingly left the room and lowered himself onto the step next to her. He’d come from the chamber and the scene that Margot had left there.

His skin was pale. His one remaining eye was glazed as he stared across the field, toward the employee buildings. There was an air of quiet shock, of resignation, about him.

Margot was grateful. She’d been afraid that he might have known what was inside the barrels.

She was fairly sure her parents had.

Someone would need to empty and refill the casks. Even if the lids never came off entirely, it would have been difficult not to notice that they required so much less wine than the other barrels.

The barrels from the hanging tree. Ephraim must have taken some dark delight in the choice. They were the barrels Ezra had carved by hand. The barrels that had made his family wealthy. And so, Ephraim had chosen them to be the Hull family’s tomb.

It had been a clever choice too. When the family went missing, the police would have searched the house, the grounds, likely even the tunnels.